God Project (15 page)

The scalpel flashed downward, slicing deep into the cerebral cortex, cutting inward and downward through the occipital lobe until the cerebellum was exposed. Behind him he heard a gasp and wasn’t surprised when Louise Bowen’s voice penetrated his concentration with the words that had so terrified Randy Corliss.

“What are you doing? You’ll kill him.”

“I won’t kill him,” Hamlin had replied coldly. “If he was going to die, he already would have.”

And now, an hour later, the operation completed, Peter Williams lay in a coma, his face placid, his breathing slow and steady, his vital signs strong.

But inside his head, part of his brain was gone. Hamlin had cut a core through the occipital lobe and the cerebellum, penetrating deep into the medulla oblongata.

The wound was still open.

“Do you want us to close for you?” Garner asked.

“I don’t want it closed at all. Put him in the lab and watch him twenty-four hours a day.”

“He’ll never survive twenty-four hours,” someone said quietly.

“We won’t know that until tomorrow, will we?” Hamlin replied. “I want this subject watched. If there’s any sign of regeneration in the brain—and I think you all know I mean unusual regeneration—I want to know about it immediately.”

“And if he wakes up?” Louise Bowen asked.

Hamlin faced her. His expression was impassive, but his eyes glinted coldly in the bright lights of the operating
room. “If he wakes up,” he said, “I trust you’ll ask him how he feels. In fact,” he added, “it would be interesting to find out if he still feels anything at all.” And then George Hamlin was gone, leaving his associates to do whatever was necessary to facilitate the survival of Peter Williams.

For Hamlin himself, Peter Williams as a person had never existed.

He was simply one more subject, Number 0168. And the subject was apparently a failure. Perhaps he would have better results with the new one, Number 0263. What was his name?

Hamlin thought for a moment, and then it came to him.

Corliss. That was it: Randy Corliss.

Starting tomorrow, he must begin watching the new subject more carefully.

Chapter 13

S
ALLY MONTGOMERY PAUSED
just inside the entrance to the Speckled Hen, and wondered if she shouldn’t turn around and walk back out again. She glanced at herself in the enormous mirror that dominated the foyer of the restaurant and felt reassured. Nothing in her reflection betrayed her nervousness. To an observer she would look to be exactly what she was—a young professional woman. She was wearing a red suit with navy blue accents, deliberately chosen to draw attention to itself and away from the strain in her face, which she had tried to hide behind a layer of carefully applied makeup.

“I’m Mrs. Montgomery,” she told the smiling hostess. “I’m meeting Mrs. Ransom.”

“Of course,” the hostess replied. “If you’ll follow me?” With Sally trailing behind her, the woman threaded her way through the crowded restaurant to a small table tucked away in an alcove near the kitchen. Jan Ransom was sipping a spritzer and said nothing until the hostess had left the table.

“I asked for this table because it’s far from prying ears. No sense whispering our secrets to the world, is there?”

Sally let herself relax a little and glanced around, relieved
to see that there wasn’t a familiar face anywhere in the room. A waiter appeared, and she ordered a glass of wine, then turned her attention to Janelle Ransom.

“I suppose you must have thought I was crazy, calling you in the middle of the night,” she began. Jan Ransom made a deprecating gesture.

“Don’t be silly. All of us are like that at first. For a while I thought I was going crazy. I was calling people I hardly know and trying to explain what had happened to my little girl. I suppose I was really trying to explain it to myself.” She fell silent as the waiter reappeared with Sally’s drink. When he was gone again, she held up her glass. “To us,” she proposed. “Lord knows, people who’ve been through what we’ve been through need to stick together.” The two women sipped on their drinks for a moment and scanned the menu.

“Can I ask you something?” Jan asked after the waiter had taken their orders. “Why did you choose me to call? Did I say something the other night?”

Sally nodded. “I don’t quite know how to start …” She faltered. Jan smiled at her encouragingly.

“Start any way you want, and don’t worry about my feelings. One thing you learn after you lose a baby to SIDS is that there are times when you have to say everything you’re feeling, no matter how awful it sounds, and hear everything people are saying, no matter how much it hurts.”

Sally took a deep breath. “You said the other night that you hadn’t wanted your baby—”

“Until she was born,” Jan broke in. “Once she was born, I fell in love with her.” A faraway look came into Jan’s eyes and she smiled. “You should have seen her, Sally. She was the most beautiful baby you ever saw, even right after she was born. None of that wizened-monkey look. She was tiny, but I swear she came into the world laughing and never stopped. Until that day …” She trailed off and the smile disappeared from her face. When she spoke again, there was a hard edge of bitterness to her voice. “I still wonder, you know. I still wonder if it was something I did, or didn’t do”

“I know,” Sally whispered. “That’s what’s terrifying me too. I—well, I hadn’t planned on having Julie either. Even my son was a couple of years ahead of schedule. Funny, isn’t it? Some women want children desperately and can’t have them. And then there are women like us, who do our best not to get pregnant, but nothing works.”

“Forget the pill?” Jan asked.

Sally shook her head. “I’m allergic. I was using an IUD.”

“So much more romantic, right? You know it’s there, and nobody has to stop to install equipment. No worrying about whether you remembered to take the pill. Just a little tiny device and all the peace of mind in the world. And then you’re pregnant.”

“You had a coil too?”

“Uh-huh. It seemed like the best way. You know why? Religion. You want a laugh? I had it all figured out that with the IUD, I’d only be committing one sin, and I thought I could get away with that. The pill was going to be a sin a day, and even though I don’t go to church, I knew I’d have a little twinge of guilt every time I took it. So I went into Dr. Wiseman’s office one day, got my coil and my guilt, and went home and forgot about it.”

Sally frowned. “Dr. Wiseman?” she repeated. “Arthur Wiseman?”

“Do you know him?”

“He’s my doctor.”

Jan Ransom chuckled hollowly. “Now what do you suppose the odds are on that? Two women, the same doctor, the same device, the same failure, and then SIDS.”

Sally Montgomery did not share Jan’s amusement. What, she wondered,
were
the odds? She began calculating in her head, but there were too many variables.

“…  and you have to go on living,” she heard Jan saying.

“You sound like my mother.”

“And like my own. Sally, it’s hard to accept what’s happened. No one knows that better than I do. But
there’s nothing else you can do. Nothing’s going to bring Julie back and nothing’s going to make you feel better. All you can do is try to let the wounds start to heal.”

“But I can’t do that,” Sally said quietly. “I can’t just go on as if nothing happened. Something did happen and I have to know what it was.” She held up a hand as Jan started to say something. “And don’t tell me it was SIDS. I won’t accept that It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“But that’s just it, Sally. Don’t you see? SIDS
doesn’t
make sense—that’s the awful part of it.”

Sally sat silently, her eyes meeting Jan Ransom’s. “Do you think I’m going crazy?” she asked at last.

Jan chewed on her lower lip a moment, then shook her head. “No. No more than I went crazy the first few months. Do what you have to do, Sally. In time it will all work out.” Then she smiled ruefully. “You know something? I was hoping I might be able to help you today—help you cut some corners. But I can’t, can I? All I can do is let you know that I understand what you’re going through. You have to go through it yourself.” She raised her glass.

“Good luck.”

   The clinic seemed oddly quiet as Sally walked down the green-walled corridor toward Arthur Wiseman’s office, and the sound of her heels clicking on the tile floor echoed with an eerie hollowness. But it’s not the clinic that seems empty, she decided as she turned the last corner. It’s me. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing here, so it seems strange. Strange and scary. Then she stepped into Dr. Wiseman’s outer office. His nurse looked up at her, smiling uncertainly.

“Mrs. Montgomery? Did you have an appointment today?” She reached for her book.

“No,” Sally reassured her. “I was just hoping maybe I could talk to the doctor for a couple of minutes. Would it be possible?”

The nurse turned her attention to the appointment book, then nodded. “I think we can just shoehorn you
in.” She grinned and winked conspiratorially. “In fact, it’s an easy fit—I had a cancellation an hour ago, and the doctor was counting on an hour to himself. We just won’t give it to him.” She stood up, then, after tapping briefly on the closed door to the inner office, went in. A moment later she reappeared. “Go right in, Mrs. Montgomery.”

Arthur Wiseman was waiting for her, his hand outstretched, his expression cordial. “Sally! What a pleasant surprise.” The smile melted from his face to be replaced by a look of concern. “Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

“I don’t know,” Sally said pensively, settling herself into the chair next to his desk. “I just wanted to ask you about a couple of things. I’ve been talking to some people, including Janelle Ransom.”

Wiseman’s brows rose a little. “Jan? How did you meet her?”

“The SIDS Foundation. Steve and I went to one of the meetings they sponsor.”

“I see. And Jan was there?”

Sally nodded. “We had lunch today, and I discovered something that worries me. We were both using IUDs when we got pregnant.”

“And?” Wiseman asked.

“And, well, I suppose it just seemed like too much of a coincidence that we were both using IUDs and both got pregnant and both lost our daughters to SIDS.”

Wiseman sighed heavily and leaned back. Here it comes, he thought. When there is no easy explanation for a death, the family turns on the doctor. “Just what is it you think might have happened?”

“I don’t know,” Sally admitted. “It just occurred to me that perhaps the IUD might have … well …”

“Injured the fetus?” Wiseman asked. He leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk. “Sally, that’s patently impossible. In order for you to have conceived, the IUD would have to have been flushed out of your system. And that, statistically, happens in two out of ten cases. I told you that right from the start, if you remember. Except for the pill, which you can’t use, there’s no
foolproof method of birth control. And with an IUD, you never know when your body rejects it. It happened to you years ago, and you had Jason. Then, for eight years there was no problem. Maybe it was the new device we tried and our mistake was in trying a third kind a couple of years ago. But I’m not sure it would have mattered. You don’t feel it when it’s in, and you don’t feel it when it’s gone. But it absolutely couldn’t have affected the fetus, that I can assure you. The similarities between your case and Jan Ransom’s are simply coincidence. And not much of a coincidence, except for the fact that you both lost your babies to SIDS.”

“Don’t you think that’s enough to make me wonder?” Sally asked.

“Of course it is,” Wiseman said, relaxing back into his chair. “And of course you should have come to see me. But I’m not sure what I can do for you.”

Sally’s eyes moved to the CRT on Wiseman’s desk. It was, she knew, a remote terminal of the computer that served most of the needs of the town. “Perhaps you could show me Julie’s records,” she suggested.

Wiseman hesitated, instinctively searching his mind for a valid excuse to deny Sally’s request. There was none. “All right,” he agreed at last. “But since she was Mark Malone’s patient, I think he should be here too.” He picked up the phone, spoke briefly, and then hung.

“Do you really think we’ll find anything in Julie’s records?” he asked as they waited.

“I don’t know,” Sally said truthfully. “In fact, I’m not even sure I’ll be able to understand them.”

“Well, I can understand them,” Wiseman assured her. A moment later the office door opened, and the pediatrician appeared. He greeted Sally, then looked questioningly toward Wiseman, who explained what Sally had proposed.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Malone said, after quickly reviewing what he remembered of Julie’s records. There was nothing, as far as he knew, that could upset Sally. He switched the computer terminal on and swiftly
tapped in some instructions. Then he smiled encouragingly at Sally. “Come around here.”

Sally went around the desk to stand close to Malone as the CRT screen began to fill up with the medical record of her daughter. Other than the birth data, there wasn’t much: the results of the monthly examinations that Julie had been given, the last just two days before she died, all of which, Wiseman explained, reflected a picture of a remarkably healthy baby. Then there was the final report of her death, with a copy of the death certificate.

“I don’t even know what I might be looking for,” Sally said as she scanned the screen.

“You’d be looking for something wrong,” Wiseman told her. “But according to this Julie wasn’t damaged in any way, either before or after the birth.” He looked to Mark Malone for confirmation, and the younger doctor nodded his agreement.

Sally pressed one of the cursor keys on the console, and the record began scrolling upward until the screen was filled with a series of letters and numbers that looked, to Sally’s untrained eyes, like gibberish. “What’s all this?” she asked.

Malone shrugged indifferently. “Test results. Analyses of blood samples, tissue samples, mine samples. All of it very routine and very normal.”

“I see,” Sally muttered. Then she frowned. As the data continued to roll up the screen, a number, set off by itself, suddenly appeared in the lower right-hand corner. Sally took her finger off the cursor key. “What’s that?”